The studio sold through market stalls and two shops, with a spreadsheet that tracked what was in stock. Online orders came by email and Instagram messages, and each one needed a manual reply.
We built a catalogue of about sixty products with a hosted checkout, so we never touch card data. Every product page lists the glaze, dimensions and whether the piece is dishwasher safe, and has a photograph on a plain background. Stock counts are synchronised from the spreadsheet by a small script that runs every ten minutes.
Shipping was the hardest part. Ceramics break, and different parcel services charge very different rates by size and country. We set up a simple table of zones and box sizes, and tested it with forty real parcels before launch. The breakage rate in the first three months was two parcels out of 410.